Last week, Twitter finally announced a “share” button for its Android app. The feature’s already standard in iOS, making Twitter really, really late to its own game. It’s just the latest example of a social media platform chasing revenues from competitors. Apps aren’t above copying off a classmate’s paper to get ahead.

TikTok announced new Shopping Ads this week in an effort to streamline in-app ecommerce.

With millions of views on social media, celebrity endorsements, and even a scandal under its belt, Olaplex is primed for the spotlight.

When it comes to online shopping, 61% of US consumers begin their product hunt on Amazon, close to half on a search engine like Google, and 32% on Walmart.com.

The TikTok train continues to gather steam, with growing user numbers, engagement rates, and ad revenues. But UK marketers have a lot to consider when marketing on TikTok—where catching the eye of users is an entirely different proposition than it is on other social platforms.

In the US, Twitter will lose 1.4 million monthly users between 2022 and 2026. Many of those defectors will be people who joined in the initial years of the pandemic—for updates on COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election—but are leaving out of news fatigue or in pursuit of other content.

In April, Elon Musk entered an agreement with Twitter to buy the platform for roughly $44 billion.

This year, US adults will spend 25.7% of their social media time on Facebook, down 9.6 percentage points from 2019. As Facebook’s share drops, TikTok’s will continue to grow. US adults will devote 16.7% of their social time to TikTok this year, up 12.2 percentage points from 2019.

This year, 4.0 million Gen Zers (born between 1997 and 2012) will become social network users, up 8.4% over 2021.

YouTube’s short-video and commerce ambitions rely on creator adoption and participation. Creators are the lifeblood of YouTube, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they have the power to move audiences to new features or formats, as well as sway purchase decisions.

Among US social network users, those ages 18 and older will spend an average of 1 hour, 40 minutes per day on those platforms in 2022, the same amount as last year. This figure is peaking after pandemic restrictions fueled a rapid rise in social media use over the past two years, and it will decline by 2 minutes next year.

ByteDance properties Douyin and TikTok have been making waves inside and outside China for several years. Their combined spectacular growth will result in ad revenues of more than $30 billion for their parent company in 2022, leaving ByteDance in fifth place among ad publishers worldwide.

Twitter has started a gentle decline in US users. The social media app peaked in 2021 with 57.8 million monthly US users. This year, that figure will flutter downward by 0.5%, hitting 57.5 million by year-end. But it's not all a decline for the platform.

On Monday, Twitter accepted a bid from Elon Musk to buy the platform for about $44 billion, putting the world's richest man in the driver's seat of one of the world's biggest social media apps.

In 2021, social audio app Clubhouse registered a total of 6.7 million downloads in the US. About 42% of those downloads occurred during Q1 2021, when the app received extraordinary media buzz. But as established platforms created copycat features, Clubhouse’s downloads decreased.

For growth marketers, TV advertising is a logical path forward, offering massive reach, efficiency, and returns. A typical campaign investment of $150,000 may deliver over 30 million impressions and reach upwards of 15 million people.

TikTok is the social commerce platform of the moment, as brands and marketers look to cash in on the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt phenomenon. While TikTok may not have as large a shopper base as Facebook or Instagram, its shoppers are highly active and engaged.

Around the world, Facebook is the most popular social app for livestream purchases. Among internet users who had bought a product via a social media livestream, 57.8% did so on the blue app. Meanwhile, 45.8% have made a livestream purchase on Instagram, and just 15.8% have on TikTok.

As social network user counts reach new milestones, brand marketers can’t ignore this massive audience, its behaviors on different platforms, and the enhanced targeting capabilities now available from ad products.